morituri te salutant
by the insane have strength
Summary: "I am pleading with him to stay alive, but he is calm in the face of death. He doesn't show worry, fear or dread. He shows relief. He has found a way to escape the war." T for violence & character death.


**Title:** morituri te salutant

**Summary: **"I am pleading with him to stay alive, but he is calm in the face of death. He doesn't show worry, fear or dread. He shows relief. He has found a way to escape the war."

**Rating:** T for violence, character death.

**Author:** Ebony (This Ebony Bird).

**Beta:** None.

**Characters:** OC Death Eater. Mentions of Lord Voldemort, Death Eaters, wizarding world.

**Pairings: ****Mentions of OC/OC.**

**World:** Hogwarts.

**Setting:** May 1998.

**Genres:** Tragedy, Angst, Drama, Crime.

**Status:** Complete.

******Disclaimer: ****I'm going to say this once and once only. Canon material is owned by Joanne K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing (UK), Arthur A. Levine Books (US), and Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. This would not be FanFiction if I owned the Harry Potter franchise, so don't expect me to act like I do. Unless stated as otherwise, all original characters and plotlines are fictional. If there is any similarity to situations in other stories or real-life circumstances that you may recognize, it is purely coincidental. I tend to plagiarize my own ideas, so if you are familiar any of my other stories you may see parallels and crossovers with subjects matter such as languages, circumstances, et cetera. **

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morituri te salutant

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"_those about to die salute you"_

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We fight for our bloodline, our people. But who will fight for us?

_He said that he would make us into soldiers._

_He didn't say that he would make us go mad._

_Does he know how many of us have forgotten who we are?_

Explosions ring, piercing the air with sharp pangs of gunpowder-covered noise. The war here has been going on for what feels like forever. The castle grounds are chaos, people running around everywhere. Nobody knows who is who anymore, or who is on which side. We aim at everyone, killing anyone who shoots curses at us, before being killed ourselves. No one wants to die, it is a struggle to survive. But to survive, you have to kill. Kill or be killed, we were taught. We were taught to be men, but it was failed to mention that to live like a man, you have to kill like a man. And for what? To prove who is stronger? To prove what is right and wrong? To prove... What? Or was it all in cold blood? To kill just for the sake of being different? To kill innocent people for the sake of killing, is that what it means to be a man? We are not even men, mere puppets with a manly image tattooed into our skin like the skull-and-snake marks so many of us have branded on our left forearms. The role of being a man in this war is nothing but to be an executor.

_He said that we would be heroes._

_He didn't say that we would be afraid._

_Does he know how much it hurts to kill innocent people?_

We were taught that Mudbloods were like animals, lower than animals. the Dark Lord said that we had to stop them from overpowering our world and land, things that were rightfully ours. Those things are not ours, but they don't belong to anybody else. Nobody owns the Earth. Nobody owns the sky, the trees, the ocean. It doesn't matter what a piece of paper or a few complicated words say, nobody can own things greater and more powerful than they. But we always try, don't we? I snap back to reality, and as sparks embed themselves into the now-lifeless bodies of my friends, enemies, and people I do not know, I run. I want out. It doesn't matter to me if this is the right thing to do. In my heart I know I am not betraying my country by running away, this needs to end. I am not the one to stop the war, but I cannot kill any more people in the name of the Greater Good. I can't do it.

_He said that we would bring honour to our families._

_He didn't say that we might die along the way._

_Does he know how much it hurts to know you'll never hold your daughter in your arms ever again?_

My feet end up running me to a friend of mine who is very much absorbed in the battle. His mask is falling off the side of his head, and the toes of his boots are worn from too much running and wear. He is covered in ash, as am I. The whole castle is being torn apart, as everyone's lives turn to ash and smoke, like the incinerated bodies of the enemies that had been thrown mercilessly into the bonfires that we had been convinced to set. They were once living, breathing people who were killed simply because of their blood. What game is this? If you aren't made from a cookie cutter or you follow a different path, you deserve to die? Who came up with this? It wasn't the Dark Lord's idea. He just happens to be one of many men who have had the same idea towards society. However, he is one of the few who have acted on his beliefs. We are taught that the Dark Lord is right, that he knows what he is doing. We are taught to act on the Dark Lord's order, taught to kill at the Dark Lord's command. There is only one thing I am sure of anymore- the Dark Lord is not what he said that he would be. The Dark Lord is a lie.

_He said that he would whip us into shape._

_He didn't say that he would beat us this hard._

_Does he know how much pain war has caused us?_

There are children, teenagers, adults, running around everywhere. They are all trying to escape, trying to get out of the war. The once-silent air is now filthy and stained with the final cries of the young children dying in their parents' arms, and the angry yells of the Death Eaters and the enemy wizards and witches. The final, ash-covered whispers of an old man with a gaping hole in his chest. The screams of a teenaged girl over the body of the boy she fell in love with. The sobs of a grey-haired woman weeping over the lifeless, blood-stained bodies of her daughter and husband. The anguished calls of a young man begging his brother to wake up and laugh again. Yet, they are the lucky ones, who have been with their families from the start. How are they lucky? I want to shut everything out, I want to plug my ears and scream until I can only hear the sound of my own scream, and the pounding of my heartbeat. I want it all to go away. To say that I can handle war would be a lie.

_He said that it would be an easy victory. _

_He didn't say that they would put up such a fight_

_Does he know how many of us would like to just give up?_

They said that if we signed up to join the Dark Lord then there was nothing to lose. We would bring victory to the purebloods. We would eliminate the parasitic Mudbloods, the ones unworthy of life. If we were killed along the way, then we would die heroic deaths. It's not like they would be that hard to beat, just a few clean Avada Kedavras and it would be over. Signing up for war seemed like a good idea at the time, bringing pride to your country and fighting for what's right. I soon learned that the media lied, that being a Death Eater wasn't anything like it was advertised. Are we really fighting for what is right?

_He said that it would be over before we knew it._

_He didn't say that the war would go on forever._

_Does he know how long the slaughter-filled days and nights seem?_

The Death Eater beside me, my friend from when I was back in school, starts laughing as he fires Unforgivable Curses from his wands again and again. He mutters something about the enemies. It doesn't really matter to me what he is saying. I bite my tongue, knowing that speaking out is a death wish. It doesn't matter what anyone except the Dark Lord thinks, not here. Nothing except the Dark Lord matters here. Nothing except the Dark Lord, and killing. That is all. Lives don't matter here, feelings don't matter here. Not here, not here. Nobody's opinions are heard, no one cares here. If you aren't a the Dark Lord supporter, you don't get respect from anybody. Not here.

_He said that when the war is over we could all go home._

_He didn't say that there might not be a home to go back to._

_Does he know what homesickness feels like?_

I hear a child scream, and a young boy no more than twelve years old but still very small, runs out of a cloud of bomb smoke. My friend stands up and grins, his eyes narrowing, focusing on the barrel of his gun. The boy runs towards us, his wide eyes boring into mine. They seem to be calling for help, pleading. But my friend has other plans, for unlike me, he agrees with the Dark Lord. He knows what he signed up for. The boy is metres away from us, and with one, sharp flick of his wand and the utterance of a stabbing spell, the boy falls to the hard, cold ground, almost dead at my feet. His large, dark brown eyes stare up into mine. I wince and look away, my breathing shaking. My friend laughs and calls me a name. He is disgusted that I cannot stand the sight of the boy. He has always scorned me for my refusal to look a dead man in the eyes. But I can't do it, their eyes speak to me. The eyes are the most animated part of a person, the windows to a soul. If I look in their eyes, I can hear their screams, their last words before their soul was ripped from their body. My friend has no problem coping with killing and war, he just looks at the bodies and gives a defiant laugh. He seems to think that he can make the Dark Lord proud by killing the most enemies as he possibly can. I am different than he, I do not want to impress the Dark Lord. I do not want recognition for slaughtering people with jobs, families, and lives. I only want to go home and forget that any of this ever happened. But I can't: My hometown was destroyed, there is nothing for me back there. My wife and children are dead, my mother and father, my friends... All dead. And it was all my fault. The Dark Lord had heard of my skills in battle, the training I had done for four years with a wizarding military school in Russia, right after I had graduated from Hogwarts. He had sought me out, and when I originally refused, he decided hat I needed leverage. And so he took everything away from me so that I had no reason to say no. He took everything except the prospects of being a Death Eater.

_He said that war is the experience of a lifetime._

_He didn't say that we would wish to never see war again._

_Does he know how many scars we have on the inside, as well as the outside?_

I feel like crying. My friend leaps back into battle, shooting at anyone that doesn't wear the uniform marking him as a Death Eater. I kneel beside the young boy who is still alive, barely. I shield him from the wind, smoke, and bits of flying rubble, trying to protect him. It is over for him, but I say nothing. Tears well in the brim of my eyes dripping onto the boy's face. The wet tears make streaks on his face where you can see his skin colour through the layer of ash. He smiles at me, meeting my eyes with his. I am pleading with him to stay alive, but he is calm in the face of death. He doesn't show worry, fear or dread. He shows relief. He has found a way to escape the war.

_He said that they needed to be eliminated, killed._

_He didn't say that we would hear their screams long after their deaths._

_Does he know how loud the dead can speak?_

I hold one of the boy's small hands and watch as the dark red circle expands over his torso. My friend had shot him in the stomach, giving him a slow but painful death. My heart and my head agree on something now, that this man is my friend no longer. The boy looks at his wound and back at me, a sad smile on his face. My heart screams, I want so much to help this boy, to tell him that it will be okay. But deep inside, I know that this boy's story is over. He coughs, tears of pain running from his eyes. His face still remains calm. I continue to weep over the young boy, my heart continuing to scream in agony. I've had it, this time it's going to end. My ears catch something over the loud screams of explosions speaking to one another. The boy speaks. He murmurs something, a name. My ears are not tuned finely enough to understand what he is saying, but I nod as the tears continue to trail down my face. He says something else, so quiet I can barely hear him. He says what I can only understand as "_Not all bad. Not you._" I am able to manage a small smile, and I choke out a thank you. The tears in my eyes pour down onto the boy, splattering onto his chest and face. He squeezes my hand with one of his small, near-lifeless hands, the sad smile still etched on his face as the sparkle fades from his eyes and one last sigh is pressed from his frail body. The boy is dead.

_He said that if we wanted, we could pretend this never happened._

_He didn't say that we would be haunted by the memories._

_Does he know which of us would rather die than kill one more human being?_

I stand up and walk away from the dead boy, stepping towards the battle. I walk away, trying not to look at the mounds of bodies. But they are everywhere, I see them even when I close my eyes. Their glassy, unseeing eyes are imprinted on the back of my eyelids. I close my eyes and shudder, shutting out the world around me. The curses echo in my ears, the screams of war, anger, pain, and terror growing louder and louder as I try to shut them out. I cannot take it anymore. I want it to stop. I want this war to end now. But it won't, I know that neither side will stop fighting until there is no one left to kill, no more lives to take. I think of the boy, relieved after finding the only escape route out of the war. So I step blindly into a cloud of smoke, and calmly put the tip of my wand to my head. I am calm, like the dead boy that I intend to follow. He is waiting for me, I can see him in my mind, waiting. With one last deep breath, I breathe the curse and join the little boy. Together, we walk out of the war, and into the sky. For us, the war is over.

_I said that I could handle it._

_I lied. I couldn't handle it. _

_But that doesn't matter anymore._

_I have found the one way out of the war._

We fight for our bloodline, our people, but who will fight for us?

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**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

**Oops this one's kind of dark. Sorry ladies and gents.**

**-e.**


End file.
